


The What Ifs

by NeoVenus22



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hours later, Rigsby can still smell her perfume.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The What Ifs

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 1x16, 'Bloodshot'

Hours later, Rigsby can still smell her perfume.

Sitting at his desk, downing a painkiller and adding his signature to the incident report, he still feels the faintest trace of her arms around him, like a ghost limb, and remembers the smell of her pressed up against him.

Something flowery. He was never good at that sort of thing, distinguishing one flower from the next, and while he could obviously tell smells apart, he wouldn't have been able to tell anyone if it smelled like a tulip or a lily. Fear and adrenaline had made her sweat through it for the most part, anyway, and he'd smelled the tiniest bit of smoke from a gunfight. That he'd recognize anywhere.

And her lips, he'd definitely been able to smell her lips, so dangerously near his. Strawberry lip gloss. She hadn't been wearing it when he'd come in that morning, he was pretty sure, she must've ducked out to put some on for her surprise date, while he'd been getting his ass kicked in the bathroom by the boyfriend. (Fake boyfriend. Real ex-boyfriend.)

Rigsby wasn't a stalker. That guy had been the ultimate stalker. Not to mention a master con artist. Rigsby couldn't imagine what sort of controlled crazy it'd take to go to all the trouble of dating a girl as a means to ending a decades-old grudge. He'd had to figure out who to date and how to appeal to her. He'd have to get inside a government building, find out just who in the office would be a problem and know how to take them down, and time it all for when there wouldn't be anyone around to see. All of this just to get to Jane, who was freaking blind anyway and not that difficult to get to.

So no, Rigsby, for all of his craziness (and it took a lot of crazy to remain in love with a girl who basically saw him as nothing more than an uncouth coworker at best and a complete pain in the ass at worst), was not a stalker. Just someone who was pathetically obsessed with a phantom hug and the scent of fruity lip junk.

Had she really meant to kiss him? Or had he just imagined that? Hope had a way of twisting a guy's perception of things, put a flirty spin on an average hello. So maybe she'd really meant it.

But he knew she didn't. Enough time with the CBI had honed his instincts, even if the continued proximity of a gorgeous woman tended to dull them. If Van Pelt really wanted to be with him, she would be. She wouldn't be dating fake lawyers, she wouldn't be clinging to their job as an excuse.

So all he had was a single ghost hug and a thousand 'what ifs'.


End file.
